12/27/08

K, guess I didn't make it online last weekend. My hubby's computer went down and he's been using mine a lot. With two of us using the same one when we used to just use our own I got off-schedule. We usually do the computer things at the same time as each other. He's taking the cord apart and fixing it and such as I type. (We can't just go to the store and get another here, have to find one online and it takes forever and lots 'o bucks to get one here).

Sleep
We haven't been able to farm, still, due to all the rains here and how our new farm has been flooded for the last few weeks. So we've been working on things around the house and it's been great, however we've also gotten off-schedule with our sleeping. I think it's affecting our quality of sleep too. We're both starting to realize it and will be trying to ease back into something more regular again.

Female
I'm on day 8 of my cycle, there's a little boy icon on there. I haven't been willing to take my temperature for a while though since the sleep is so irregular and I've been either going to sleep or getting up too near the times I can take my temperature lately. I have been putting in when my period starts, so I suppose that's where it's getting the info from. I'm thinking of changing the time I take my temperature to a different time since our schedule's all different now. That might help.

I felt a bit of PMS before this last period: sore breasts, a little headache and some constipation/bloating. I felt a little hormone emotional for a few hours as well. I haven't felt that stuff in years. It all was really slight and minor, but I noticed them 'cause I don't usually have those symptoms anymore. A sign that I need to get things more in order towards the ideal again. I think the main thing that will help my health more noticeably than the other things is getting regular aerobic exercise, so I'm gonna' work getting that back into my life again (along with the other things).

Farm
We've run out of things at the old farm and can't plant more there so we're not doing farmer's markets anymore. Well, actually there are a few older things we've been harvesting for ourselves as we make trips back and forth for moving everything. It's not the quality we'd sell, but it works for personal use, for now at least. We're about out of that too... I'm thinking of planting some things at our house to bridge the gap, perhaps in pots so that they don't get flooded as well.

Food
So that means I've started to buy things for my evening meals again. At first I figured I might as well get stuff I'd buy occasionally if I had to buy stuff. It's hard to buy things we usually grow - get so spoiled when you're a farmer and all... The problem with getting the things I was getting is that it's not ideal fare, not too bad in terms of that sort of thing, but not the best either. I was had some dried tomatoes that were in olive oil (and the olive oil) on some non-organic cucumber noodles a few times. I also had some Essene bread, which is considered raw (like dehydrated) but is still grains and such. Both delicious, but not ideal, oh well. Actually, the Essene bread wasn't so delicious, so I'll probably skip that kind at least in the future. I do okay with the olive oil occasionally on our fresh grown organic cukes, but I this was a bit more than occasionally since I had it 3 or 4 nights in a row...

What else am I eating these days? I'm having coconut water or OJ for breakfast and bananas for lunch. I'm eating either apple bananas, ladyfinger bananas, "cooking" bananas (raw & ripe of course), or Cavendish bananas these days. The Cavendish aren't locally grown but the rest are. I sometimes end up having to get them at the store when there aren't enough ripe local bananas. The storms have affected the banana supply here as well as slowing the ripening speed of what I find. I'm drinking more water lately - probably 'cause of the non-ideal dinner foods. I think it's mainly the incidental salt I'm getting from them that's making me more thirsty. Did I say that I wrapped some of the older stuff from the farm in dried Nori sheets a few times too? Yeah, not too great either. Not the worst, of course, but I've done better for myself and will again! :)

I keep thinking that I should just skip the dinner stuff for now and just have fruit instead, but I haven't been into having bananas or oranges for dinner right now, and haven't been getting the more expensive fruits 'cause we're budgeting everything 'till we're farming again. So I'm more on a survival raw diet than a thrival one. It's going well considering the situation and all.

Stress
Speaking of going well considering the situation and all... I haven't been stressed out much at all about the lack of income thing or the farm being flooded and more storms coming thing either. We might end up doing other work in the meantime until the land dries up enough to plant or we find another place to farm, but I feel fine. Nice. It feels like it's all gonna' work out well, so I'm "going with it." :)

Exercise
I'm also not getting as much exercise as usual since we're not farming. We're doing things around the house, moving things from the old farm to the new one and within the house, but it doesn't feel as good physically. Perhaps it's 'cause we're not outside all day anymore or something...

Overall
Anyway, I am still doing raw vegan and getting exercise and sleep, but it's "off" a bit compared to how it usually is, so I'm not as vital as I know I can be. I really want to get these things done around the house though, so I'm willing to deal with it. I'll just have to adjust to the changes and get into the swing of getting regular quality sleep, exercise and more ideal food again the way things are right now. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Happy Holidays!

Aloha!

12/14/08

K, so I'm on-track-ish for the Blogging so far... Yay! :)

Farm
It looks like we might have done our last farmers' market for a while, although we might have a bit for Wednesday. We're gonna' try...

We harvested for yesterday's market hoping it'd clear up enough, but it didn't. The bridge was closed so we couldn't do the first one. The storm let up enough to go to the second one, but not many people were going out at that point anyway. There had been a lot of thunder and lightning in addition to the wind and rain and we don't usually get lightning, and even rarer is thunder with it. It started raining again and getting windy, etc. after a bit, so we left with lots of leftovers. Unfortunately we weren't able to preserve them, so they'll be future fertilizer via compost...

Food
Too bad about the salad 'cause I could use some salad right now. Oh well. I'll hafta' make do with something else. Kinda' a bummer to be combined with a shortage of ripe bananas too. My banana guy was away the week before last and it threw off the supply (in addition to the varied whether for ripening) more than I realized.

I got some carrots, broccoli and corn at the farmer's market yesterday - all of which are sort of rare for me. I was feeling like getting other veggies in me as well as the greens. I ate the corn right away - 'cause it's best eaten as soon as possible after it's been picked. I ate the carrots a little while ago and had some of the broccoli leaves as wrappers for wraps with my salad last night. The broccoli was mainly leaves. Maybe I'll dip the rest of the broccoli into some lemon-tahini dip or something tonight after lots and lots of orange juice (since I don't have salad).

I had OJ for breakfast too and a small hand of apple bananas at lunch. Now that I think about it, there's probably no way I'll not overeat the fats today. Oh well. I think I'll have several hands of bananas ready for tomorrow or the next day, so I'll be able to even it out then.

I gathered a bunch of lilikoi (passion fruit), the yellow tangy kind from our yard today & I'll probably have some of them tonight too, just after the OJ and before the dip. Hmmm... it's turning out to be a better dinner than I thought it'd be. :)

Exercise
Not much official exercise... we've been doing loads of stuff at our house with the house and yard so have been getting some that way. We've cleared out room to use my son's home gym thing which is exciting so I'll probably start using that again soon. We've been moving some stuff around that hasn't been accessible for a while and the dust was getting to me so I've been not as energetic due to the sneezing increase that happens with exercise when that's happening. Too bad I wasn't full-on with the elements of health better these days - I probably wouldn't have been as bothered by the dust and all. I know it's worked that way for me in the past with 80-10-10 (where if I'm "on it" with things I don't have much if any allergy issues). Oh well. It is what it is. At least I know why.

Sleep
Sleep? Er, uh.... yeah. Well... We have been getting loads and loads of stuff done that we've meant to for years - but it has also often been late at night so I haven't been getting as good of sleep as I should. I started to catch up a bit today - took a nap, but still need to do a bit more, perhaps tomorrow. We'll see.

Female
I should be well into the green days, but I have been getting to sleep so close to my regular time for taking my temperature and getting up too close to it afterward that I haven't been able to take my temperature lately. I probably could have and it might have been okay, but I like to skip it if I'm in doubt about if the reading would be accurate or not, just in case...

While we wanted more children years ago, our son is 20 now and we're kinda' liking the independence and such. It's still a possibility for the future to have another child, but I'm not wanting to take the chance right now.

Crafts
I think I'm gonna' join Ravelry and blog over there about some of the fiber crafts I do. I have to request an invitation, then I can join. If/when that happens I'll let y'all know so if any of you are interested in more info on that stuff you can go there. I figure I shouldn't take up too much space here on it. I might change my mind and just combine it all into this one blog, still deciding. If you have suggestions, let me know. :)

In the meantime I'll cover some things here... I love knitting and stuff like that 'cause it gives me something to do with my hands instead of figiting when I can't do anything else. I also like being able to make custom things so they're just how I want them. And it's also exciting, sort of addictive to me too... There are little bits of progress to measure and goals to reach along the way and it's so exciting to me to anticipate and reach them. Here's and example of what I mean: I finally decided to go ahead and go for knitting a sock.

I was always intimidated by having to use double-pointed needles - and not just two, but FIVE! I had been afraid I'd end up with messes of dropped stitches by the time I got back around again. LOL So I decided to face my fear and just do it. I'm sooo glad I did too! :) I knitted a nice lacy pair of cotton socks for myself and I was so amazed that I was actually doing it the whole time. It was like, "Wow, these bamboo knitting needles are working just fine, not losing stiches after all." Then, "Hey, look! The toe actually looks like a sock toe, and my toes fit in it!" (I was knitting them toe-up).

Next I was using Five needles instead of two and it was, "How cool this looks and it's not that hard after all." Then I got to the pattern and it was, "That is a nice pattern I do like it. I'm almost to the heel!" Kinda' nifty how that design had the same procedure for the heel as the toe, which really appeals to me from a practical perspective or something like that. So I thought that was way-cool too. When I was done with the heel it was, "Gosh, this really is starting to look like a real sock!" I was showing each of these steps and sharing my excitement with my family and at that point my hubby was excited/impressed too. He said something like, "It looks like a sock now already. I mean you could just end it now and it'd be a sock." (He likes to wear footy types of short socks with his running shoes and all).

I agreed that I could, but was gonna' finish the pattern and make more of a leg on it. I'm glad I did. They came out so much cuter than I thought they would. They're almost like little boots or something. The same look/feel to me as the little boots I used to love to wear in college and when I met my hubby. Sweet! :) I'll hafta' take a picture of 'em and show y'all. I'll try to take pics of the other two projects I've done recently as well - and maybe some older ones too while I'm at it... Maybe I'll have that done for next week's posting.

I was gonna' get back to spinning again today and was all ready to sit down and spin when I realized that my container of unspun de-seeded cotton had been moved during all the stuff we're doing at the house and I have no idea where it is right now. Oh well. Probably a good thing anyway. I might not have gotten to doing this blog on time otherwise.

A lot of the things we're doing around the house and farm are sort of like craft projects on a larger scale. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but that's what building stuff is really. Not sure why it didn't occur to me before...

Other
Well, I should go now. My hubby's back from the new farm, it's dark and that means it's time to work on the garage some more... It feels so great to finally get these things done! :)

Aloha!

12/10/08 - Updates

About Blogging
K, so you wonder, what happened? Janie was on a roll again...

Yeah, well, um... lots of stuff, actually. Sorry. I haven't been online much most of the time so it's been harder to do the blogging because of that. I'm thinking of doing audio or video blogging instead or in addition, alternating or something. Podcasts of sorts and all. My camera takes short videos fairly well and I might be able to find my son's digital audio recorder - both portable. I could do the blogs in-between stuff informally on the go... Hmmm... I think it has potential.

I think I'll be able to do some of the FAQs with audio or video stuff too. That might get them to happen quicker than they've been happening.

I have been pretty obsessed with knitting lately - been knitting pretty much every bit of spare time I have with my hands. I have also gotten into listening to Podcasts about crafts in addition to news and such as well. I just realized today that my son hasn't been using the digital audio recorder we got him to use for taking notes or making compositions in school. It's one that would interface with voice recognition software and type things out for him, which is a challenge due to his dyslexia. He's gotten fairly proficient with typing and spell check though and doesn't need it for his life right now. So.... I'm hoping he knows where it is still (Mr. Gagethead, he is indeedy) and it's not buried in some pile of electronic stuff somewhere not to be found for years. LOL

I've also decided that rather than try to post daily and feel badly about getting so far behind, I'll try to post weekly instead - either typed, audio or video. We'll see how that works. I'm not sure what day I'll post them, probably over the weekend, but I'll figure it out once our schedules settle again.

The Farm
We were doing quite well with the farm for a while there, had worked up to 7 farmers' markets a week (over 6 days - there were 2 on one of the days), and had other wholesale customers as well. We were lovingly pumping out the organic veggies and loving it. :)

We knew that we'd probably have to move the veggies to another place once the papayas get to a certain age as they'd shade out the veggies and would get so large that the roots would overlap so we wouldn't want to disturb them. So we were able to get a lease on some other land that we planned to move onto when the time came. We planned to overlap things and transition from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

Well, there were complications with that plan - mainly getting the land at the new farm prepared for planting. We had a hard time finding someone who had the equipment and know-how to do what we needed here - and then had a hard time finding time they were available. It took several months to get them out there to begin with, but it worked quite well. Well, sort of... He wouldn't do both parts we wanted to do, claiming that we needed to mow, then wait and mow again before doing the rest. That's how most of them do it here. So try as we did, we could not get him to stay and finish the second part that day. He said he'd be back in a week or two though, so we figured we could wait. Well, wait we did... and we're still waiting! It not only has been over a week or two - it's been over a month or two at this point. Ug!

The problem is, we cannot wait any longer. The time to move is now - for many reasons: we were subleasing through someone else and the landlord changed the locks on the gates but would not issue more than one key for our group (even though there were several subleasing the piece). This is after the security guards had been hassling people who came there to help us farm. It got worse after the key change - they said that only my husband could go there (not even me) and that we had to have the key (which they would not give enough copies of for my hubby to have his own) and that we could not use a hide-a-key and all. It'd become totally unworkable. Evenso, my hubby plodded along and worked out something so that he can bring me in and we have access to the shared key.

The security people got all weird over time and the landlord's office claimed that they were having problems out there (there are many acres of leased land over there beyond the gates and many people leasing various parts of it). We weren't able to get in for a few days when they changed the locks because the security people told us we couldn't go in without the key - but they hadn't issued the new key yet. Doi. We ended up having to miss a few markets and weren't able to go in daily to water, weed, plant and tend to the farm either. In addition to that, there had been a few storms and such that made it more challenging to grow things consistently and some farmer's markets that were completely rained out. It had become questionable about whether the people we were subleasing from actually had a lease for the term we were supposed to have as well as other issues with them that had become apparent. We had been having less and less planting space due to the papayas as well, so we realized the time to relocate had come, ready or not. We've reduced down to two days of farmer's markets a week, have stopped planting and stopped weeding at the old farm in order to get this done.

So we have been working on relocating our farm, even though we are still waiting for the equipment to come and prepare it for us to plant... because we have no other choice at this point. My hubby and I have been trying to figure out ways to get some things planted ASAP without waiting for the equipment as we cannot even raise the guy on the phone these days anymore. (He may be off-island for the holidays and such). Heh, the ironic thing about the security and all over at our old farm is that after we reduced the farmer's markets and stopped going there daily, someone stole some of our tools. We'd never had any theft problems before - and they were supposed to be making things more secure by making it so hard for people who belong there to get in. LOL We weren't able to do anything about it the day we discovered the thefts 'cause we were rushed to get the harvest done and to market, but we moved out everything we could over the next couple of days, leaving things to do harvest with since we'd still need it there for now. We got a storage shed and assembled it and all, after my hubby cleared some of the land with his high wheel weed wacker and regular heavy duty weed wacker.

We need to set up the irrigation and all over at the new place too - but need the land prepped first... We're trying to figure out how to get it done anyway. It'll work out in some manner or another though.

It's nice to not have that long commute daily anymore and I'm looking forward to the short commute in the near future. So it'll be much better once it's done. We'll just end up having a gap in our production it seems, which we'll deal with in some manner or another as well.

Oh yeah, we've also been looking for acreage and at acreage within the price range of the person who's gonna' get land that we'll then be able to use long-term. We've been looking at auctions, listings and word of mouth stuff too. We haven't found anything that will work in that price range yet, but we feel we're getting close! :)

House
Given that we couldn't farm and haven't been able to do things as much in relation to that lately we've been taking the opportunity to get things done around the house that were overdue and needed. It feels so nice to get some of this done - finally. We've been able to get rid of some of the clutter inside much better than ever before and we've started to do some repairs here and there (like the wooden fence that we put up about 10 years ago that needs new supports 'cause we didn't want to use treated lumber at the time and it's rotten now). We've also decided to take out the garden fencing in our yard, figuring that we'll do the trellis gardening at the farm instead. That will give us more room to get to the fruit trees and harvest them when they're producing. We're going to move the plants in the garden area to the new farm. Most of them are Permaculture-ish type of plants that grow on their own here once established, so we can plant them there even before the land is prepped. We decided to not have a compost pile at the house since the new farm is in town and we can bring things there instead, so we're clearing out the compost piles from the yard. Nice.

It feels terrific to make some tangible progress in this area. There's much more we want to accomplish (including new flooring at some point - hopefully soon), so we may not finish it before we get things going at the farm but we're getting loads of it done now. Speaking of the flooring... it's currently what was a white plush carpet (came with the house, unfortunately) that has majorly suffered from little boys trekking in and out of the yard from the pool to my son's room and all, not to mention us coming from the garden in the yard or the farm. We all tried to take off our shoes at the door, but sometimes when in a hurry that fell by the wayside... And then there were the occasional spills and such, and rain coming in from the window when we didn't realize it, stuff leaking under boxes stored there, etc. It's amazing that it doesn't smell. Thank GOODness! :) It's not white anymore, needless to say, heh. And it's needed replacing due to all the stains and such for a while. Now that we've cleared out a lot of the boxes and such that were stored in there it's more of a possibility. Yay! :)

We want to have something that will be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. LOL I suppose almost anything would be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. :) We'd been eyeing bamboo flooring that's surprisingly inexpensive for some time now, but as it got closer I started thinking that tile was better. We'd been eyeing tiles too, but were leaning towards the bamboo previously. I went on the Internet to find out pros and cons of things and discovered that we might want to do a cement stain instead, and then seal it. The foundation is a cement slab and the garage has it bare with just a seal, which works quite well. It looks like the cement stains are quite versatile and can be quite beautiful as well. So that's what I'm leaning towards right now. My hubby's not so sure. Actually he's not so sure about thinking about changing the flooring right now either. We have so much else to deal with right now, it's understandable. Whatever we choose we'd have to take the current carpet out, so I figure that we'll see if cement staining is even an option at that point. (The cement slab has to be in good condition to do it apparently).

So ANYway... lots of stuff going on at the house-front as well, suffice it to say. I'll move on to other stuff now...

Food
I'm still doing all raw, like usual, however not as well as usual for the time being at least. We're budgeting our funds and have not had as many veggies for ourselves to eat or to trade for other things, so things have been a bit scarce at times. This has resulted in me eating a bit too much fat (probably more like 20%-25% ish) and some of my rarely occasionally things more frequently. It's temporary though, so I'm feeling okay about it. Of course I'm noticing the corresponding changes in my vitality but at least I know what's causing it and how to change it to what I want.

Exercise
That's been going really well at times and not so good at other times while I was away. I finally was able to make it to one of the classes at the gym where I work. It was really fun! :) I was going to the gym and rowing every other day and doing some free weights again too for a while there. Then it became obvious that I wasn't able to keep doing the work schedule I'd been doing - and get enough sleep. I was getting too tired and was taking the time to sleep instead of working out 'cause I just wasn't getting enough sleep otherwise. Between getting up at 3 in the morning for the job at the gym and doing harvests and farmer's markets for the rest of the day, sometimes into the night, I was only getting about 3-5 hours of sleep most days. I was having trouble staying awake when driving to the farmer's market that was the farthest from the farm (about an hour and a half) so my hubby had to do that one. Just so I could sleep. He needed to be farming though. It didn't make sense to hire temporary help at the farm to cover my hours either 'cause we pay people more than I was getting paid at the gym. LOL So I told them I couldn't work that day anymore. They said that the other person who was working mornings was going to be switching jobs there and they wanted me to just switch that day for another instead of working one less day. I figured out what day was the least worst day and exchanged it for that one. The thing is, it conflicted with the class I took there. Bummer. I thought that I might be able to take the yoga class that conflicted with my previous shift though, but now I'm realizing that it's probably not gonna' happen. Now that we're moving our farm, we won't be down that way as much so I'll probably not make it.

I'm thinking that I may have to quit that job completely, or at least drop the day I switched for. That day's not gonna' work out very well once we're back to our usual schedule since that night's the night we stay very late harvesting (with headlamps) for the early morning market the "next" day. I will probably not go there much 'cause it's an hour away, and it doesn't make sense to drive that far for the amount of pay I get and a membership I'll probably not be using much if at all... But I'm not gonna' drop things just yet. I will wait and see what happens. I may be able to work out after my shifts and after markets we have in that area if I'm getting enough sleep otherwise. Since we wouldn't have to commute for two hours a day just to get to the farm it's possible that I would get enough sleep anyway... We'll see...

In the meantime I'm doing other exercise here and there. We cleared out enough room in the living room to be able to use some of the exercise things I had in there and have enough floor room to do things in. Yay! My hubby pulled out the two rebounders we have when it was raining and we rebounded together. It was so fun! I just love rebounding! It's so joyful! :) It's also kinda' funny to try to coordinate our bouncing together too. :)

Sleep
Well, I sort of covered that in other areas here - it's been variable, but I was falling quite behind for a while too. I discovered that I needed to temper my knitting obsession too 'cause I was staying up too late doing that as well as the other challenges. So I'm still challenged in that area and working on it... Yeah, tonight it's the blogging, heh. Oh well...

Female
I haven't been taking my temperature as regularly lately 'cause of the irregular sleep, but the BabyComp still works anyway. So cool. I'm soooo glad I got it. I can just take may temperature around ovulation and menstration and that does it.

Other Stuff
My relationship with my hubby's going fabulously well, as is my relationship with my son. I am so grateful for my life with them, every moment.

When we cleared out the living room that also made room for my spinning wheel again. Yay! I haven't gotten back to it yet, mainly 'cause I've been distracted with my knitting obsession, but I'm planning on starting back on it next week.

I was playing the banjo ukulele every day - in my spare time, on the way to/from the farm and all, but then the battery in the tuner I used to keep it tuned ran out... And I took too long to get it replaced. It's been a while now and I've gotten out of practice. I have the batteries now, but haven't started back yet. I'll be starting off close to the beginning. That's okay. It's for fun anyway. The knitting has sort of taken it's place to/from the farm so I'll have to alternate them once I get going again.

The vog has come by once or twice since I last posted I believe. The last one was a few days ago and was getting to me. It lasted a bit longer than the vog though and I realized that it was a bit different afterwards - it turned out that I had another one of those little eyelashes growing astray - and into my eye. It was a bit hard to figure it out 'cause my eyes are often sensitive to wind after the vog exposure even after it's gone and it often feels like something's in it or irritating it. Was nice to have an instant solution to that irritation though - just pluck the eyelash and it's over. Definitely nice.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I only have one guinea pig now. The other one died. She was quite old, for a guinea pig that is, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It looked like she was peaceful and she'd been eating and drinking and acting fine so I think she was happy too. Same thing happened with my dog too - she died peacefully and was old as well. We miss them both daily, and we're grateful to have been able to share our lives with them for as long as we did. :) So now we're sharing our house and lives with only one guinea pig and a cat... along with all the unofficial companions like geckos and other lizards, birds and everything outside and all...

Let's see, what else... hmm... don't know right now. Guess it'll come out eventually as I blog more.

K, gonna' go now. Need to relax and go to sleep... getting up early tomorrow again and stayed up too late last night finishing a shirt I was knitting... (insert embarrassed smiley here).

10-12-08

Sleep:
up at 7am-ish

Food:
orange juice for breakfast, yellow dragon fruit a bit afterward
the rest is TBD..

We're going to a potluck today that is encouraging people to bring home-grown produce so hopefully that'll mean lotsa' fruit! :) We're actually not gonna' be bringing fruit though 'cause none of our fruit trees are bearing at the moment, well except the lemon tree. We're bringing three salads ('cause there are three of us): one that's two of our farm's 5-lettuce blend bags' worth and perhaps some rose petals; one that's two of our farm's salad mix bags' worth with some edible herb flowers; one that's cubed chayote squash, lemon, katuk leaves & flowers, tomatoes and perhaps some rose petals - all from our yard, except the tomatoes are from our farm. I'll make two dressings for people to pour on separately: avocado-lemon and avocado-lemon-basil-chives. I'll blend the avocado and lemon to dressing consistency, perhaps adding water if needed, pour out some of it into one container and then make the other dressing by adding the chopped herbs into the blender and barely blending it just for mixing. I'll try to take some pics of them for y'all. Since the thing starts at 10am and lunch is at noon, I figure that's when the potluck'll be so we're gonna' take things in a cooler and assemble them into the bowls when it's time.


update:
So I didn't end up having the OJ for breakfast after all. I discovered that we only had 2 oranges left LOL, so I had bananas instead. I ate 'em while making the dressing and chayote thing for the potluck. My hubby was gonna' get a pot for me to plant seeds from the yellow dragon fruit into so I didn't have them yet this morning either.

I ended up putting the juice of the 2 oranges into the dressings for the potluck too, in order to have more liquid 'cause the avocado made it thicker than I had lemons for and didn't want to add too much water... It tasted nice so it worked out fine. We were all running late for the workshop so I forgot to take the pictures I intended of the food. Oops - outta' practice again... had my camera and everything too.

The salads and dressings went over really well at the potluck. There were pasta dishes, chips, crackers, other salads and such too. Good thing my hubby over harvested. LOL We refilled the large salad bowls several times and it was all eaten, even though the crackers and some other things weren't. I was surprised how quickly the chayote and katuk dish went with that diverse crowd. Nice. There were some bananas there, but they were pretty bruised up so I had our salads all mixed together with the dressing. Then a friend of mine told me that they'd brought some longan from their yard. I hadn't seen it before so went and got some. Not the best to eat it after the salad dressing (overt fat from the avocado), but it was a potluck and I knew I might be mis-combining...

A farmer friend of mine gave me a chip she'd made from dehydrating greens and I can't remember what else - perhaps only Bragg's, not sure. It was tasty. I'm now wondering what else was in there 'cause if it was only greens and Bragg's I could do some without the Bragg's at some point for my hubby and it'd be a better choice for chips I think... I'll hafta' ask her sometime.

I had more bananas for dinner. I've got a lot of them ripening now so I'll be eating them a lot for a while...

Exercise:
Not a lot of official exercise today. It's the only day we don't harvest for the farmer's markets, but I am harvesting from our yard for a potluck today and my hubby's harvesting a tiny amount from the farm for it as well. I'll probably do some weights and/or dance video game with my son later.

Detox:
A bit dehydrated lately, not sure why. Drinking more water, but haven't had anything noticeable detox-wise to report - yet.

Female:
I skipped the temperature today 'cause my sleep was irregular (my hubby likes to sleep on an air mattress & it sprung a slow leak that partially deflated it during the night) and I thought it wouldn't be accurate, day 8 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I planned to catch up on my posts - or at least with the pics I took a while back today, but I'm not sure if that's gonna' happen after all. My hubby found out about a workshop/class that we all (my hubby, son and I) want to take today. It takes up most of the day, so I may not have time after all. Sorry. If I don't do it today, it'll probably wait 'till next weekend 'cause I'm still filling in for the guy who filled in for me at the gym and it makes me a bit short on sleep and time... Yesterday I decided to take a nap after the farmers markets, thought it'd be an hour or two.. I ended up sleeping three hours and could have still slept more if my hubby hadn't come home then. I wanted to get up and spend some time with him for a while before going back to sleep for the night. He was sleepy too so we went to sleep early. This morning I feel fairly well-rested (considering the deflated bed situation overnight LOL). Guess we'll hafta' patch the airbed or something. I was definitely wanting my hammock after a while, but stuck around 'cause I wanted to be with my hubby more...

The class we're going to is nifty - supposed to help you build your own wind and/or solar power system. We've all read books on this sort of thing and set up little solar power systems in the past, so hopefully it will cover things in more detail than just an overview or what's-possible-and-hire-someone sort of deal. It'd be cool if they got so detailed as to tell you how to make solar cells and such, but I kinda' think not, think it's a buy this and buy that sort of thing...

K, well that's it for now. I'll be back here posting for y'all when I can! :)

update: the workshop was pretty good, not just this is what's possible, went into more specifics and it helped update us with some of the newer batteries, controllers and such since we were off the grid the last time. Nice. K, gotta' go to sleep!!!

I'll try to take pics of my food better again...

Aloha! :)

9/29/08

This was posted two weeks later and dated as if it was posted on the 29th, so the day of the week will show correctly and it keeps things in chronological order...

Sleep:
up at 3am to get ready for my shift at the gym - will be doing so all week...

Food:
~7am: I found 3 mangosteen in the kitchen and my hubby said that I could have 'em. Yum! :)


Then I had the rest of the starfruit from the day before:


~8:45am: When we got to the farm I had the water from two of the coconuts we got from our yard the night before:


I had lunch a couple of times 'cause I was too busy to eat it all at once. It was all bananas from our yard:


I can't remember what I had the rest of the day anymore and lost the pics later in the day so I don't have the pics to remind me. I think it was salad from our farm though.

Exercise:
Harvesting and light calisthenics as I had time, stairs and such at my shift at the gym... so not much, but I was still taking it easy with the jet lag and all.

Detox:
Yeah, I'm sure. Can't remember specifics though...

Female:
I think this was the first day I took my temperature again for a long time. I think it was day 5 of my cycle, but can't remember specifically at this point... It was a green day though, I remember that. :)

The Rest:
It was my first day back at the gym for work. It was nice to see everyone again too. I did the farmer's market with my hubby since he'd been doing it while I was gone. We went and got the freezer after market.

I took a few pics of a chameleon at the farm when drinking my coconuts and lost all the pics on my camera card that I hadn't copied over yet when deleting the ones I didn't want. Even though only a few were highlighted and I hit the delete key on my computer and it asked if I wanted to delete that many pics, it somehow deleted all of the pics on my card in that folder. :( Bummer. I had taken some pics of ukuleles I saw at Costco that I thought my dad might be interested in that I lost too. Now I'll hafta' figure out how to get in there again to do it again. I don't have a membership, but he does... I do have the web optimized pic I did for y'all of the chameleon though. Here it is:


K, I've only got one more day's pics from two weeks ago (the 30th), but will hafta' post 'em another time. It's getting too late tonight (the 12th) as I'm getting up at 3am again tomorrow...

Aloha! :)

9/28/08

I'm posting this two weeks later, so I don't remember much at this point. I'm gonna' override the posting date so it shows up as if I posted it on the 28th though.

It was my first day back, so I was short on food still and still jet lagged...

Food:
Breakfast was stuff I found around the house...
~10:15am: Star fruit - the first pic's what I started with and the 2nd is what was left when I was 'done' with the star fruit...


~10:30am: Then I decided to have some of the corn in the fridge 'cause even though I was done with star fruit, it wasn't enough calories. I find it hard to eat enough star fruit at times due to the waxiness of it. I realized that the corn wasn't fresh and I wouldn't usually eat it beyond the first day from harvest, but I was foraging so-to-speak, so I ate one to see how it sat with me. It did fine, so I ate another. The pic's of the second one and one like the first...


~12:15pm: My son told me that there were some longan around for me (gift from other farmers at market) so I searched around some more and found them. There weren't many so I ate 'em on the way into the farm...


~1:15pm: I got to the farm and looked around at what was still growing in the personal section I took care of before I left. The cucumbers were pretty much all done by then, there were still some tomatoes and basil, the peas were long gone and there were a few long beans still though. So I ate what long beans I could find. Here's a pic of 'em growing, followed by a pic of me with some of 'em. :) I was wearing the lei my hubby gave me at the airport when he picked me up 'cause it was still good...



~3pm: It was time for more serious calories, the foraging wasn't doing it for me anymore. So we went to the grocery store that usually has ripe bananas, but they didn't have any ripe right then. :( So I decided to get dates and eat 'em with apples to clean my teeth and lessen the sweetness. Yep. Home in the tropics and stuck eating imported stuff still. LOL I'll be able to go to the farmer's market soon and get things going again. No worries. :) My hubby got stuff from their deli and we ate at the mall. Here's my stuff in the re-usable bag that stuffs into a smaller attached one for storage:


When we got home (at about 6pm) we discovered that the rack of bananas in our yard that my hubby was so excited about ('cause it was sooo large and his favorite kind) had ripened while I was gone and some of them were already eaten by the birds. He was so busy doing everything, leaving in the dark and arriving back in the dark that he hadn't noticed... He harvested it and we harvested some coconuts for me to have in the morning too. I got lemons from our tree and noticed that there were roses ready for eating as well. (I eat the petals in salads). No papayas ready just yet). I gathered some yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) too. :) No more avocados left at this point. Oh well. Here's a pic of the coconuts from our tree after I put them in the back of our truck to take to the farm the next day:


~7pm: Dinner was cucumber noodles with cukes from our farm that I harvested before we left, topped with some julienne sun dried tomatoes from a jar that were soaking in olive oil. Eeek! Yeah, olive oil... Oh well. It was yummy at least. :)

I also sprinkled basil flowers on the 'pasta' that I'd gathered at our farm earlier too. Here's a pic I took of the basil flowers in the field...


Exercise:
Not too much today, just harvesting and stuff...

Detox:
Can't remember at this point (2 weeks later) - I figure there was something though as I'd been not eating all that optimally... I can see my skin and hair weren't up to par in the pic. That's sort of a usual thing for me after flying as well.

Female:
I didn't take my temperature this morning yet 'cause my sleeping was still messed up from jet lag and all..

The Rest:
It was really nice to be home. There was a strange smell the night before that we couldn't place. It smelled like something burning or something else, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from or what it was... In the morning we still smelled it and it was worse so we tried to figure it out even more. I finally decided that it was coming from the back or underneath the fridge. My hubby wasn't convinced and thought it was coming from a different area. Then we sort of converged to a similar area and I thought it was coming from the back of the fridge where a little fan was and he thought it was underneath the fridge. It was hard to locate 'cause the smell would sort of come and go in it's intensity. I thought it was related to the fridge's operation 'cause the smell would be more noticeable when the fridge was powering on and less when it was not. At a certain point late in the morning we discovered that it was indeed the fridge 'cause when my hubby was cleaning out the floor behind the fridge it started sparking when it powered on. He promptly unplugged it and we realized that we needed to get a new fridge. LOL Good thing we kept at it and didn't just go off to the farm. It made us rather late to get to the farm for watering, but it saved our house from burning down... My hubby cut the cord so our son wouldn't come and plug it back in when we were gone ('cause he wasn't there at the time and didn't know what was up).

So after going to the farm and watering and foraging we went to the mall and any other place we could think of with refrigerators to see our options. They were much more expensive than we thought they'd be and not all of them on display were available right away. We decided on one at Sears and were going to go back the next day to buy it and get it delivered. They said that if we got it delivered it wouldn't happen 'till Wednesday so there was no rush. The delivery would be free - we pay it upfront and get a rebate that will refund us. Hard to pass that up, especially since they had the best one in our opinion.

Since I'm writing this 2 weeks later I'll keep going with this thread... I went in the next day and saw the same sales guy to buy it. Then it turned out that the stainless steel one we were looking at wasn't the price it said on it and that we'd discussed. That price was apparently for the white model. Ug! We'd talked all about how it was the same as the white model beside it and that must be the difference in price - the sales guys had participated in that discussion too. Doi. There was another sales gal there on Monday who explained the difference in the price between the white models of the stainless steel one we wanted and the white one beside it was that the shelves inside had a slight lip on the sides of the shelves rather than just glass at the sides of the shelves. Quite minor. ANYway... the stainless model was $200 more than we thought and I wasn't prepared to pay for that. I'd gone in alone and didn't have the money for it with me or my hubby to discuss it with. At this point the other white one seemed like a better deal 'cause of the $200 difference. The thing was, they didn't even have the stainless steel one in stock either! Ug! So I went back to the farm and told my hubby about it and he agreed that perhaps we shouldn't get either of them.

We thought about just getting a freezer that opens at the top in order to freeze the water bottles for the farmer's market and leave it at that. Our son could use the little 3/4 fridge we had but weren't using and we didn't really need refrigeration for most things. We used it for left overs from market, but nothing else much. Those freezers are more efficient and cheaper to run, better on the environment... So that's what we did. We got it and brought it home that night. We got one that was the right size to fit where the fridge was, but didn't put it in there 'cause we still had the fridge and didn't have time to move it first.

We were able to plug in the freezer in the middle of the night and had the bottles of water in there to freeze for the farmer's markets. We were buying bags of ice to use for markets in the meantime. The freezer turned out to be not so great for this. It wasn't freezing the water as quickly and solidly as the refrigerator had - and hadn't even frozen one solid after 2 days... We then re-examined the owner's manual and noticed that it said that it was designed to store frozen foods.. so perhaps it didn't get cold enough to freeze things, only cold enough to keep things frozen that were already frozen?!? Ug! We gave it more time and my hubby noticed that it seemed to do better when we had more things in there and theorized that it needed less open space to freeze things. So we've been working on increasing the amount of bottles in there and it's been working better for us. It still takes about a day and a half or two days to freeze the bottles (whereas the fridge would take only overnight or one day), but we haven't been able to fill it up enough quite yet either. It'd be nice to have it full though so we'd always have plenty of the refreeze containers for the larger markets and the day we have two markets and all. So we're keeping it.

On a different note. I pulled out my son's ukulele and used the tuner my dad got me to tune it up. The pegs were a bit rusty so it was a bit more difficult to tune, but it tuned up nicely and I like the sound. So does my hubby. Yay! :) I started to practice the cords I knew and experiment with things with them and trying to find other notes or chords that sound good w/'em. I also looked at another string instrument we had around the same size. It was a banjo thing I guess my mom had and looking at it again I noticed that it had four strings. A banjo uke! Cool! I always liked the way that thing looked, now perhaps I'll know how to tune and play it too! Sweet! :) There were only 3 strings on it and it was very dusty and dirty so I took the strings off and cleaned it up some. I figured I'd bring it into a music store and ask them how best to clean it up further and get it restrung.

I wasn't able to go in right away to get it looked at, and when I did I found that I had to go back another day when the guy who did repairs would be there. That was Friday (the 10th) and he said that it was missing it's bridge, but he could order one fairly inexpensively. He told me a bit about it and will help me string and tune it when the bridge arrives. It should be here at the end of next week. Cool! :) He said it wasn't a top of the line sort of thing even in it's time 'cause it didn't have tension adjustments on the sides and all, but it could still have a nice sound. I like the design of it so I want to find out what it sounds like, so I'm going for it.

In the meantime I've been practicing and playing on my son's uke, which has been fun. I found that I needed to tune it almost every time though and figured it was partly 'cause of the rust on the pegs and more likely 'cause it didn't have a case and was getting untuned in transit. I found a nifty camo case and got it on the spot. Yay! I'm lovin' that case, yeah.

I haven't been playing the harmonica since I got back... want to find the book I have on how to play it here first...

K, enough on this day and updates on that stuff since...

Wednesday 5-14-08

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp., again at 5am and decided not to go in that early, again at 5:30am when hubby decided to get up and go in to the farm to get the harvest started, I decided to go in later on the bus... up at 7:30am to get ready to go in on the 8:30 bus

Food Summary:
Coming Soon!

Exercise Summary:
Coming Soon!

Detox:
Coming Soon!

Female:
3am temp: 96.58 degrees Fahrenheit, day 13 of my cycle, red day, girl kid icon

General Things/AKA The Rest:
I think I'll put what happens in general here and the specifics in their own areas... so here 'goes! :)

~8:40am did short errand at the store then walked over to farm from the bus stop
changed clothes and started helping with harvest

~noon finished harvest in the field, then helped with washing, bagging, loading truck and such for market

~1pm left for market, doing errands first
We needed to return the shade structure we got last week 'cause it turned out to be too big for markets and was too hard to put up. We're supposed to have 10' of space, so we got a 10'x10' thing but it turned out to be more like 8.5' so we decided to just get an umbrella after all. We'd thought it'd be too flimsy in the wind, and then saw wooden ones that seemed more sturdy. So we returned the shade thing and got a wooden umbrella for shade - just before market. It was a bit rushed 'cause we wanted to get to market by 2pm and had to go pay bills as well. We also had to get some more bags to put the salad mixes in 'cause our tomato harvest was much larger than expected and we used them up.

We did some time saving tricks where I'd drop my hubby off and he'd look for the umbrella while I went to pay the electric bill and then I called him to find out if they had it when pulling into the parking lot. He told me what colors they had and we decided over the phone and he put it in the cart and we met at the cash register. While I waited in line to pay he went and got the car and had it right outside that door to load it up and go. On our last stop before market, we were about a half hour later than we wanted to be (but still early enough for market). It was funny to me to see my hubby running through the store to get the bags and back to the register to buy them. I had dropped him at the entrance and then found a parking spot where I could see inside enough to start up the truck again and pick him up as he came out. It worked though, we got everything done and got to market with enough time to set up.

We hadn't bagged the salad mixes yet 'cause we didn't have enough bags or time so we'd wanted to be there at 2 so that we could do it before market (which starts at 3). We didn't have enough time to bag it all before market, but we had enough so that we had some on the table in time. Market started up slowly today for some reason, which was perfect for us to catch up. Yay! We could both bag and then when people were buying, etc. one of us would bag while the other helped them and all. It picked up later and ended up being an average market overall. The umbrella worked great too! It has a 6' span and shaded our whole table well. There wasn't much wind today, which was also good for us 'cause we hadn't quite figured out how we were going to secure it for wind yet. We did a little bit of securing and that was enough for today. We'll have to figure out something better for the next market though 'cause it's more windy over there usually...

~4:30 or 5pm we left market and went home, picked up a hitchhiker on the way that we knew, he's actually an old friend of someone I know from the VegSource raw & sports nutrition board and the FoodnSport Health and Fitness Camp. Kinda' cool huh? Small world.

~5:30pm we got home and unloaded the truck from market. I had picked up my regular order of "cooking" bananas and "lady finger" bananas and some cocos. I used to have a regular $10 order of young coconuts but the guy I get them from is getting older and the trees are getting taller so he can't get them regularly anymore. I check in with him at market in case one of his sons has come over to help him and get what he has, if any.

Talk about small worlds... the guy I've been getting the bananas from for years now told me at the last market we did that his farm is actually quite near ours. What a coincidence! It turned out to be serendipitous too. We had some discussions about what we're growing, what he's growing there, etc. and where we are. Today he said that we could get baby apple banana shoots and sugar cane from him to plant over at our place if we wanted. I had mentioned that we wanted to plant them as a wind break but were having a hard time finding any that were on that side of the island. There's a virus that affects bananas here called "bunchy top" - it's spread by aphids I believe.

In attempts to stop the spread of it, people aren't allowed to bring banana plants or plant parts (except the fruits) between the North Shore and South Shore, basically. There's a spot on the highway that defines the line they cannot cross. All of the places we know of to get banana keiki (keiki means baby or child in Hawaiian and is the common name used for banana shoots) are on the North Shore or East Side, both of which are on the other side of the do not cross line from our farm. So it's exciting that we might be able to get banana keiki from him for our farm. He's had trouble with the bunchy top too but said that the tall apple banana type hasn't had trouble with it like the other types he's growing there. Cool! That's the kind my hubby likes, practically the only kind he'll eat, actually. Nice. Hope he doesn't charge too much for them...

Let's see what else did I get at market...
I got some onion chives from a farmer a couple of spots down from us. It's hard to find that kind of chive here for some reason. Garlic chives grow here abundantly and easily so I guess a lot of people don't bother trying to grow the onion ones. I don't like the garlic ones though. Too bad 'cause they're pretty and would make a nice border to an edible flower patch or something. I try not to eat chives and herbs much 'cause they make me have B.O. and bad breath - well at least I notice it, I don't think anyone else notices much. I like the way I smell the most when I skip all herbs and spices, but I do like the taste of chives every once in a while, so... I got some. (I've planted some at the farm in flats to put in the personal area too).

I also got some grapefruits and lemons. I was looking for oranges, but couldn't find any. I guess the season's pau (Hawaiian for over) for now. I didn't go looking until we'd gotten enough bagged though, but it didn't look like anyone who usually has them had empty containers they usually have them in, so I think they didn't have any from the start. Bummer I was really getting into the OJ, so was my hubby. Good thing we got the grapefruits though.

My hubby got some apple bananas for himself at market too. Oh, and I got 2 bags of garbanzo sprouts from some friends who grow them. I have helped them problem solve some of their sprout things 'cause I used to do organic ones commercially back when we were farmers before - about 11 years ago. I had brought them a bag of tomatoes as a present at the end of market and they gave me the garbanzos 'cause that's the kind I like the most. I eat them occasionally as they gift them to me. They're another thing I try not to eat much of 'cause they can give me gas. Sometimes I don't get the gas when I eat them apart from other things, so that's how I eat them. I often eat them right away 'cause I haven't had a cooler in the past, but since we're selling our salad at market now we have a cooler so I took them home and put them in the fridge for tomorrow or the next day. I was eating a small bag of rambutan that I got. It was quite expensive, but they were excellent rambutans and it's the very beginning of the season - they're the first of the season to actually be ripe actually, so I splurged... they were yummy and worth it to me! :)

~6pm I gave my guinea pig some of the extra lettuce from market and the carrot tops I get from some organic farmers I know at market and noticed that most of the mountain apple tree's flower buds were blossoming. So pretty! It's soooo loaded with flowers too - hope they end up being fruit. I love that fruit!!! And that tree makes the best ones I've ever had too! It's sort of rare for us to be home when it's still light these days so I took the opportunity to look at the rest of the fruit growing in our yard. The two apple banana stalks are still ripening and not ready for harvest. There were some papayas that could be harvested and my hubby came out and got them while I went to see if any of the yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) that was growing on our avocado tree had ripened and dropped yet. Nope. Not yet. The avocados are getting larger, but are still tiny.

I was able to forage a nice snack of Surinam cherries from our bush of them on the way to check on the lemon tree, which is having a slight gap in ripe fruits. It's such an amazing tree. It's a Meyer lemon, which makes some really large, juicy and sweet-for-a-lemon fruits.. and has been doing so almost non-stop since it started fruiting. It deserves a bit of a break. There are lots of green ones on there and one close to ripening, and that's a break for it. I want to put some of our primo compost from our compost pile under both the mountain apple tree and the lemon tree for sure when I get a chance. If there's enough and enough time I'll do the avocado tree too. We've been using the compost to help plant things at the farm, and trying to move our composting to over there so I'm not sure if there's enough right now for all those trees. The Jamacian lilikoi has a few flowers, but isn't fruiting yet either.

So after that yummy cherry snack I went in and prepared my dinner. My hubby had made his dinner too and started watching the movie "Remember the Titans" which we watched together when eating. It was a good movie, we hadn't seen it yet. It was live TV so when I was done eating I took out my laptop and started to do computer stuff during the commercials.
One of the things I'd discovered in the computer stuff I was doing is that guinea pigs eat tomatoes. I thought they didn't so had never tried them out with my pigs. I excitedly got one of our sweet tomatoes and decided to do an experiment with my guinea pig. LOL I like to refer to finding out if my guinea pig likes something or not an experiment.. little joke, yeah a bit 'off', but then my humor can be that way sometimes, heh. It was dark by then so I took my flashlight to see what she thought of it. My hubby came too and the dog was interested to see what was going on as well so came along.

LOL I don't think it was a very scientific experiment 'cause this guinea pig hasn't had a flashlight pointed down into her hutch before and seemed distracted by it. So funny. Also, the three of us (hubby, dog and I) standing outside her hutch to see what would happen probably threw her off too. I do have to admit that I bet our dog was probably wanting to find out if we were finally gonna' eat the guinea pig rather than if she'd eat the tomato. LOL She didn't eat it, but did seem interested in smelling it at first. She sort of acted like when I put orange or other citrus in there. She stiffs them and walks away from them, won't eat them at first, but eats them all up when I'm not looking. It's an acid fruit too, so perhaps there's something about it in that way. I guess I'll have to wait 'till tomorrow to find out if she liked it or not.

I started blogging after a while too. After the movie ended my hubby went to do some computer stuff himself and I'm finishing the blog and going to sleep. I've gotta' get up at 3 again tomorrow... That takes us to now, and it's 10pm so I'm gonna' skip the rest of this 'till tomorrow. I will come back and fill in the summaries tomorrow or the next day when I have a chance.